The Olds Institute: Towards a Communication Model of the Knowledge-Based Organization

This article uses an exploratory qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with leaders of one rural knowledge-based organization (KBO) in Canada to underscore a longstanding but key conceptual disconnect within the management literature, viz. between knowledge as a fundamental human process based in communication, and knowledge as an organizational property or function expressed in terms of technology and/or business process. After making the case for adopting a knowledge-as-communication approach, including where support for the approach can be found in recent work in the complexity sciences, critique of a recent management model of the KBO specifically is offered. The centrality of the rural KBO's governance model in particular is then examined as embodying a communications focus both tacitly (operationally at the everyday level) and explicitly (reflectively at the senior executive level). Insights gleaned suggest an overall theoretical and research orientation to organizational knowledge in general and the KBO specifically where communication is built into the organization on deep level.